A Story for Halloween: Is Fear Why You Fail? Part II

Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, a tabula rasa [blank slate], void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety?

John Locke

17th Century English Philosopher

         An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1689

Chalk one up to experience:  A few years back, as our spring baseball season was well into its second month, I was coaching my high school team in preparation for playing in two post-season tournaments, the county and state tournaments, which in our area were separate.  We were set to play our opening state tournament game on a Monday. We had a regular season game on a Saturday, two days before, which we won.  After the game, my assistant coach and I went down to the neighborhood delicatessen for some lunch.  Upon finishing our lunch, as we exited the delicatessen, we ran into the father of one of our players.  I cannot remember if we even exchanged greetings, as he was eager to inform us that we would be facing a pitcher on Monday who threw his fastball at 95 mph!  I would have to admit that under the circumstances, with pre-state tournament angst beginning to set in, I feared that he was delivering some revelatory, esoteric scouting information, real, secret stuff.  I was completely caught off-guard, to say the least.  I perceived his facial expression to be one that reflected a sense of great accomplishment like he had the answer to the mystery of the game of baseball itself, something that went back to its origins in the cow pastures of post-Civil War America. It seemed to me that he could not wait to share the information with us.  Numerous questions ran through my mind, none of which I asked that father at that moment.  Frankly, I could not get the words out of my mouth.  I wondered, did I miss something after we were two months into the season?  I did not think that I did, as I was not a coach who went into a game, let alone a tournament game, lacking knowledge of an opponent.  I followed the media coverage, as all coaches did.  I knew that no one on the team that we would face in the opening round of the state tournament threw 95 mph fastballs. As matter of fact, no one in the area that year threw 95 mph fastballs!  In all honesty, I could not remember anyone who did in quite a long time, if ever.  Who was this phenom that I wasn’t aware of?  It made for a great story but the pitcher that father had mentioned was not even our opponent’s best pitcher, according to my information.  We would likely face their best pitcher on that Monday and I knew that he did not throw 95 mph fastballs, or anything close to that. I said nothing of any substance to the father but thanked him for the information, buying time to check his story out. On the way back to the school, I asked my assistant coach if he heard anything about a possible opposing pitcher who threw 95 mph and he said that he did not.

With just a little bit of research, I would soon conclude that the father was badly mistaken, that he was just inclined towards exaggeration, though he might have thought that his intentions were good.  However, he did present me with a problem.  Since he was at our game that Saturday, I wondered if he was spreading his inaccurate scouting report among other parents, who, most likely, would go home and tell their kids that they would be facing a pitcher on Monday who rushed it up there at 95.  Because my players never faced a pitcher who threw that hard, I could have a team psyched out before we even played the game.  Are teams being psyched-out before they play a game?  It happens.  I had seen it happen, to the detriment of my team and myself.  As the English poet John Keats said, “Nothing becomes real till it is experienced.”  Well, I experienced it and did not feel like experiencing it again.

As crazy as it may sound, THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW came to mind.  As I said, I was all too familiar with Washington Irving’s short story. I had read it in high school and maybe again in college.  In addition to showing the Disney cartoon version to my psychology and sports psychology classes, I used to show it to my sons when they were young to teach them about fearing things that do not exist. I could just have been guilty of doing the thing I was trying to teach others not to do, letting some scary tale affect me. Maybe I was a victim of my own concerns at that moment.  However, the parallels were apparent.  Wasn’t Brom Bones’ tale of The Headless Horseman similar to that father telling of the frightening fire-balling pitcher we might face?  That Saturday afternoon, I was hoping that the father’s ominous report did not cause my players to succumb to hyperactive imaginations and fear much like Ichabod Crane.  I knew that some players might have been susceptible and that fear can be contagious.  I certainly did not want to lose the game before we even played it. Experience taught me that that happens when a team gets psyched out.  As Chuck Noll, the Hall of Fame Coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, pictured below, said, “Before you can win a game, you have to not lose it.”  So, I would take steps not to lose the game.

Over the weekend, I thought of how to best prepare my team to process what was most likely misinformation.  I really did not have too many options.  What was my best recourse?  Maybe that father did not tell anyone at our game on Saturday but I could not count on that.  If he did tell everyone in attendance at the game, I could make phone calls to all of my players that weekend in an attempt to suppress the rumor but I might have created a hysteria doing that.  I did not want to give that father’s report any credence either.  I could get to my players during school on Monday to talk about it and determine what they heard, if anything, but I might not get to every one of them.  Then, I remembered something.  The area newspaper put the statistics for high school players in its sports section every Monday.  In past weeks, I did not remember seeing that pitcher’s name among the leaders in strikeouts, or other categories that would indicate a dominating pitcher.  Actually, the last time I checked, he was not even in the top 10 in strikeouts.  I could not remember if/where he ranked in the other categories. One other thing, the coverage of high school sports by the various print and electronic media outlets in our area was extensive.  Surely, someone would have written about this alleged flame-throwing pitcher by tournament time at the end of May.  Yet, no one had.     

That Monday, the day of the state tournament game, that pitcher’s ranking among strikeout leaders in the area was 15th!  Rather pedestrian for a flame thrower, I thought.  Conversely, our best pitcher was ranked at the top in strikeouts and every other pitching category, for that matter.  I would make sure that I got the statistics up on the bulletin board in our locker room for my players to see and I figured that I would get my message across before game time.  I could ask my players the most critical question – how could a pitcher who allegedly threw 95 mph be ranked 15th in strikeouts?  Surely, as logic would have it, someone with that velocity would be first.  That is unless he did not pitch enough innings due to missed time because of an injury or for some other reason.  However, that wasn’t the case.  He had pitched all season up to that point.  

Well, as it turned out, such an extraordinary pitcher, like The Headless Horseman, did not exist, not on the opposing team that day, nor on any other team in our area.  Both were merely figments of imagination, rumors, or hearsay.  My players all showed up to school that day and I made sure the message got to as many as possible and told them to spread the word.  Doing that would give them the entire school day to think about it. There was enough time for those, who might have been psyched-out, to un-psyche themselves.  I changed my pre-game speech too.  What I had planned to say about the rumor no longer mattered, for we were facing a different pitcher, our opponent’s number one.  You have to live in the moment, is that not true?  Whether or not there was some phantom, who threw 95 mph, was a moot point, for we had a state tournament game to play and the phantom wasn’t pitching.    

However, I was still wondering why that father would do what he did.  The motivation of Brom Bones was evident for those who read the short story or had seen the Disney cartoon version and it is relatively easy to understand, but, what of the intrusive father?  What would cause him to go around and spread a rumor like that, something he considered expert intelligence work, which somehow was to benefit my team?  It certainly would cause anyone to shake their head in bewilderment.  It certainly caused me to shake mine.  It still does.  What, on earth, was he thinking?  There were just so many variables at play – the statistics, lack of media coverage of that pitcher, my players’ awareness of their opponents, and my own scouting and preparation - that would cause people to doubt his story and make him look foolish.  I thought of every possible reason why he did it but I guess it really did not matter and my theories were, and still are, merely speculation.  After all, it wasn’t why he spread that rumor that mattered, it was that he did.  

What is the takeaway?  The Headless Horseman lives!  Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones live as well.  They do not live in reality.  Though they are merely literary creations, they still live in the imaginations of those who believe in that sort of thing.  The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said, “We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” As for those who get scared, they often, tragically, ignore “reality.” Consequently, they “suffer from imagination.”  Those who seek to scare other people?  Well, there also are those who use fear as a tactic to gain something – a psychological advantage over their unsuspecting victims.  The Headless Horseman?  Well, he could easily have been the pitcher, who allegedly hurled 95 mph fastballs.  However, there really was no Headless Horseman in Irving’s story and, at the time of that state tournament game, there was no such pitcher either.  I mean, the pitcher referenced by the father did indeed exist.  He just was not what that father said he was.   As it turned out, we won the game with our number one pitcher pitching.  It was on to the next round.

“Nothing becomes real till it is experienced.”

John Keats

19th Century English Poet

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